about HenselPushers
HenselPushers exists to share and celebrate the work of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. By making her compositions more accessible, we invite musicians to explore and engage with her work.
HenselPushers PDF Project
HenselPushers’ primary project since its initiation in June 2020 has been providing free PDF engravings of Hensel’s compositions which are otherwise only available as expensive print editions or hard-to-read scans of the original manuscripts. In its first year, HenselPushers more than doubled the number of Hensel’s solo piano works whose scores were freely available online in PDF format (from 22 to 45). In February 2024, we achieved another milestone: all of Hensel’s instrumental and chamber works are now available online. As of August 2024, all of Hensel’s completed solo piano compositions are now online for free thanks to HenselPushers efforts.
All PDF scores of Fanny Hensel’s original compositions will be free in perpetuity for anyone to use for study or performance.
The Fanny Hensel PDF Project by HenselPushers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Arrangements
To broaden the range of instruments, ages, and skill levels of musicians able to engage with Fanny Hensel’s music, HenselPushers publishes arrangements of her works available as books or PDF downloads.
Piano duet: Das Jahr Four-Hands Piano—full-length arrangement of the 1842 illustrated version.
Easy piano: Das Jahr Easy Piano Music & Lesson Books—simplified and shortened cycle with optional teaching and study materials book.
More arrangements are in the works. Check back regularly or sign up for email updates.
Sheet Music and Recording Directories
HenselPushers hosts directories of all of Hensel’s compositions, with links to free downloadable scores available online and print editions available for purchase from high-quality editors and publishers. These directories are organized by instrumentation:
Lieder (songs for one voice and piano)
Chamber music/Instrumental works (multiple instruments not including voice, or solo instruments other than piano)
Part songs/Choral works/Stage works (multiple voices, or solo voice with instrumental ensembles)
HenselPushers is in the process of assembling a directory of recordings of Fanny Hensel’s compositions. Recordings of roughly two thirds of Hensel’s 460+ works have been found. You are invited to help find recordings for missing works—or record and submit your own premieres.
Custom Editions
I'm currently accepting commissions for custom Hensel editions. Some of the custom projects I've been commissioned for include:
Critical editions: detailed manuscript analysis/comparisons and biographical context for specific works,
Custom arrangements: transcriptions for instrumental soloists or ensembles,
Easy piano editions: arrangements for specific levels to accommodate learners,
Preview editions: early access to single works before a whole collection is published.
Please get in touch if you are looking for any of these.
Visit our YouTube channel for visualizations of HenselPushers scores
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
Fanny Hensel geb./neé Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1805-1847) composed over 450 musical works in her lifetime. In the last year of her life, she began to publish her compositions in her own name, after publishing some of her childhood compositions in the collections of her brother, Felix Mendelssohn.
But most of her compositions remained unpublished until the late 20th century.
This site refers to Hensel’s works by H number—based on a catalogue of Hensel’s compositions compiled by Renate Hellwig-Unruh.
Biographies
Most biographical information shared on this site is from the biography Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn by R. Larry Todd.
The first major biography of Fanny Hensel was Françoise Tillard’s Fanny Mendelssohn, originally published in French in 1992.
Documentary
Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn (2023) is an excellent documentary about Fanny Hensel’s life by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Sheila Hayman, who is also Fanny’s great great great granddaughter.
19th-century sources
An edition of Hensel’s diaries (in German) is available from Breitkopf & Härtel: Fanny Hensel Tagebücher.
A translation of many of Hensel’s letters to her brother Felix are published in Marcia Citron’s The Letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn.
Hensel’s son Sebastian wrote a history covering over 100 years of the Mendelssohn family; this book includes excerpts of many family letters: The Mendelssohn Family (1729-1847)
Websites
Visit Hensel Songs Online for a complete edition of Hensel’s lieder. Consider donating to support this incredible (& self-funded) initiative by Tim Parker-Langston.
Publisher Furore, who have been publishing Hensel’s works for decades, have a site with lots of Hensel resources.